Sunday, February 15, 2009

Before the current red-dot gunsight craze...

There was the Weaver Qwik-Point. I saw my first one sitting atop a firearm many, many years ago, and it intrigued the hell out of me - especially when I gave it a try.

Fast-forward a decade or two, and my father calls me, telling me that he just inherited a vintage Marlin Model 336 in .30-30, and could I please help him remove the sight that the previous owner had installed?

When I arrived, I was startled to see an ancient Weaver Qwik-Point red dot sight sitting atop the Marlin. It had been many years since I had seen one in the wild, and here it was, locked squarely on a Weaver base attached to that levergun.

We got it off the gun, as well as the base, and I'm finding some blind 6-48 screws to fill in the empty holes on Dad's rifle.

In the meantime, he had no desire to keep the Qwik-Point, so it came home with me, because I had an idea.

My Romanian SAR-1 AK variant has the left side scope rail. Does anybody make a scope/optic mount for AKs thus configured that plants a Weaver rail fairly low over the top of the receiver cover? I'm not particularly interested in replacement receiver cover scope mounts, because they're not terribly stable, Besides, with the left-side AK mounts, they're easily removable without harming the function of the rifle.

I'd like to attach this Qwik-Point on one of those mounts, hopefully to co-witness with the rifle's iron sights, and use it for fun, hunting, etc.

Granted, while it has a very bright red dot, with no ambient light it doesn't work too well at night. No biggy, that's what the tritium sight inserts are for on my SAR-1, regardless.